During an appearance on Marvel.com, X-Force writer Rick Remender and X-Men editor Nick Lowe confirmed the upcoming storyline and dropped a few hints about the impact of the arc on the larger Marvel Universe.

"This is not just a fun ‘Age of Apocalypse’ story that will have no bearing on the Marvel Universe," said Lowe. "It will have a HUGE impact on the 616."

"These characters have been off the board for a while…and we wanted to try something a little different with it," offered Remender. "It’s tricky because we’ve announced that they’re coming up, but we don’t want to spoil too much…we have a group of X-Men and X-Force that will go to the Age of Apocalypse world…it’s connected to some of the different arcs we’ve done in the book."

Remender indicated that the X-Force team travels to the Age of Apocalypse in order to find someone or something crucial to bring back to their universe. He also indicated that it will take place within the AOA continuity, several years after the last X-Men: Age of Apocalypse miniseries.

"It’s ten years after the 2005 series. It’s been a while," said Remender. "The world has changed and not for the better. The person involved in it is a big deal, and [the mythology of] Apocalypse plays a major role."

"It puts our team in a tough spot because these are alternate version of their friends, but they’ve got their own mission as well," added Remender.

And while Apocalypse may seem like the natural villain for this story, Remender was quick to remind us that the character is dead. However, the Dark Beast (another AOA survivor) is confirmed to play a role in this storyline and in Uncanny X-Force going forward.

The Age of Apocalypse story begins in Uncanny X-Force #11 by Remender and artist Mark Brooks. It is slated to run for three issues before Jerome Opeña returns to the book.